Knight’s involvement could indicate there are no plans to relocate the Blazers from Portland, Oregon, as has been suggested over the years. At a press conference ahead of Game 1 of the NBA Finals between Golden State and the Boston Celtics on Thursday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said “the team will be sold at some point,” but he didn’t know when.
“Portland has been a great community for the NBA,” said Silver. “The team has been around for over 50 years now and our preference, my preference, would be that team stay in Portland as part of this process.”
Smolinisky, a real estate entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, joined the Dodgers property group in 2019.
Little is known about what Paul Allen would have determined for the future of the team before his death. But in general, while an individual owner can sell a team to anyone for any reason, trustees have a stricter fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of the trust. Any sale of the team would also have to be approved by three quarters of the NBA’s owners.
The Blazers were one of the NBA’s top spending teams, and at one point Paul Allen said he had lost hundreds of millions of dollars operating the franchise. But the low initial purchase price means the team can be sold for many multiples of Allen’s original $70 million investment, capitalizing on the continued financial windfall of owning a major professional sports franchise.
Buying sports teams over the decades has often been an emotional as well as financial decision, with teams often run more like family businesses with strong ties to a region. Over the past two decades, however, team valuations have exploded, revenue streams such as media deals and arena naming rights have increased in value, and entrenched investor groups from the worlds of technology and private equity have bid for teams.
If the Blazers were sold, after a tumultuous year, the new ownership group would inherit a team looking for a new direction. Last summer, the Blazers hired Chauncey Billups as their head coach, renewing questions about a sexual assault charge leveled against him when he was a player. McGowan stepped down in November. The following month, the team’s general manager, Neil Olshey, was fired after an investigation into workplace misconduct that revealed unspecified violations.
